Reinventing Prokofiev, to an Extent

New York’s major conservatories have such large footprints in the concert world — the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music with their opera productions and new music programs, and Mannes College the New School for Music with its parade of summer festivals — that you might think the market for student and faculty performances is saturated. But the Yale School of Music has established a formidable presence with its Yale in New York series at Carnegie Hall these last three seasons, mainly by presenting inventive programs of mostly new or unusual works.

For its concert at Zankel Hall on Tuesday evening Yale joined forces with the Prokofiev Society of America to present “Prokofiev Rediscovered,” a program of rarities and premieres. But much of the music was surprisingly familiar. The score of “Trapeze,” a 1924 ballet that made up most of the first half, is known under other titles, and familiar themes waft through the patriotic boilerplate of “Music for Athletic Exercises” (1939). Only “Distant Seas” (1948), a 20-minute shard of an abandoned comic opera, was wholly new.

Boris Berman, a pianist who has made an estimable series of Prokofiev recordings on Chandos, introduced the works and performed in several, including the curtain raiser, a set of Schubert waltzes, transcribed by Prokofiev for two pianos in 1923. Schubert’s melodies and rhythms, as well as an early-19th-century salon flavor, are intact in these arrangements, but Prokofiev added his own slightly acidic harmonic twist. Mr. Berman’s collaborator in these was Robert Blocker, the dean of the Yale School of Music, and if there were moments when the two pianos might have been better balanced, the performance was appealingly zesty.

Photo

Yale in New York: Elysia Dawn, in “Music for Athletic Exercises”
with Boris Berman on piano, at Zankel Hall on Tuesday.Credit
Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times

“Trapeze,” a quintet for woodwinds (oboe and clarinet) and strings (violin, viola and bass), was billed as a New York premiere, but that was a stretch. The last six of its eight movements are better known as the Quintet (Op. 39), and Prokofiev reorchestrated the first two movements and grafted them into his orchestral Divertimento (Op. 43).

If the original versions of those two movements had been found, that might have been news; but for this performance Noelle Mann and Samuel Becker reconstructed the quintet versions so that the ballet score could be performed whole. Novelty (or its lack) notwithstanding, “Trapeze” is a delightful piece, its fast movements rich in gracefully melodic, often playful themes and its slow ones suffused with a dark, distinctively Russian ponderousness. The ensemble, split between students and faculty, offered a texturally transparent, rhythmically vital account of the score.

“Music for Athletic Exercises” was meant for a 1939 sports extravaganza in Red Square, and includes a handful of dance episodes, in which hints of themes from “Alexander Nevsky” and “Lieutenant Kije” can be heard amid the uninspired, martial clatter. The orchestral score has been lost, but the manuscript of a piano version turned up in 2004, and Mr. Berman gave it an energetic reading. To compensate for the thinness of the music, Yale offered a visual element, Adam Hendrickson’s appropriately athletic choreography, danced by Elysia Dawn, Colby Damon and Matthew Renko.

It is hard to say whether Prokofiev would have had a hit with “Distant Seas” had he completed it. The story, about three college students who dream of spending their lives on arctic research expeditions — a plan imperiled when one of them is discovered to be in love — may not be for the ages. But the fragment Prokofiev completed is graceful and light-spirited, with some lovely vocal writing. The singers — Elizabeth de Trejo, soprano; Dann Coakwell and Rolando Sanz, tenors; and David Hancock, baritone (all but Mr. Hancock are students) — sang the music in Russian with suppleness and a lively comedic sense, with Mr. Berman accompanying.

The next Yale in New York concert, “Voices of American Music: A Tribute to the Oral History of American Music Project at Yale,” is at Zankel Hall on April 8; (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org.

A version of this review appears in print on February 11, 2010, on Page C7 of the New York edition with the headline: Reinventing Prokofiev, to an Extent. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe